Beyond Schnecken and Challah: A New Kosher Bakery Opens in Bala Cynwyd

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David Magerman’s Six Points Restaurant Group has just reached the halfway point of living up to its name.

Following the successful 2012 debut of Citron and Rose, which ushered in a new era of upscale kosher dining, and the 2013 launch of Six Points Catering, Magerman is now staking out a claim on the kosher carbs consumed by Main Line residents with the July 8 opening of Six Points Bakery in Bala Cynwyd.

The bakery, located next to Murray’s Deli on Montgomery Avenue, just a scone’s throw from Citron and Rose, is Magerman’s on-the-fly response to the numerous delays involved with getting his second restaurant, The Dairy, also on Montgomery Avenue in Narberth.

“The bakery is a retail outlet for selling the baked goods that we make at our commissary in King of Prussia for our catering operations,” Magerman said. “We planned on using The Dairy — which should be opening in the fall — to sell them. We decided to open up the bakery in the meantime.”

Judging from a recent taste test, Six Points is poised to do for perceptions about kosher bakeries what its sibling did for kosher restaurants. Both a lemon-poppy and a carrot-raisin muffin were exemplars of the genre — moist, flavorful and airy without any of the aluminum aftertaste that bedevils so many muffins looking for big air.

Among the cookie offerings at Six Points is a chocolate-cherry bomb that doesn’t stint on either cocoa or stone fruit impact, and which offers a texturally pleasing counterpunch of meringue-like crunch on its exterior.

Bagels are also a strong suit of the bakery, judging by the plain and sesame varieties sampled, both of which featured crisp, glossy crusts and chewy interiors.

The bakery also offers an assortment of other types of pastries during its lengthy hours of operation: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to sundown on Fridays.

The long-term future of the bakery is up in the air, according to Magerman, since his plan all along was to have the commissary’s offerings sold in The Dairy, which he says will have a more elaborate setup than the cozy confines of the bakery. However, he qualified, “if it turns out that there is a real demand for a standalone bakery, we will keep it open.” The Dairy, which was supposed to open last fall, has been held up for a variety of construction and permit reasons, Magerman has said previously.

When asked if this wasn’t just part of the business plan to give Six Points a corresponding number of venues, Magerman laughed. “We are not counting up locations — we are really trying to make the venues we have into successes, and to serve the community as well as possible.”